RCMP auxiliary officers added, but more needed

Record number of recruits required by national police force

Wearing regulation pants, shirt, tie, and ballistic vest
equipped with pepper spray and nightstick Andrew Smith looks every inch the
police officer. But standing outside the Whistler RCMP detachment Feb. 7 after
being sworn in as an auxiliary officer Smith, 21, takes a playful
congratulatory shoulder jab when he tells buddies he gets to keep his carefully
trimmed beard. It’s a reminder of how professional and yet how young auxiliary
constables can be.

The same scenario plays out when Patricia Epplett, 23, remarks
that one of her first challenges as an auxiliary officer will be to get her
pants tailored to fit her 5’1” frame.

Epplett, Smith and two other officers sworn in last week bring
Whistler’s auxiliary roster to seven.

Auxiliary officers are volunteers. They complete 100 hours of
classroom and defensive training in order to be able to work a minimum of 10
hours a month alongside a regular RCMP officer. Although they don’t carry guns,
they are allowed to make arrests, a situation they might run into while
policing Whistler’s many public events or patrolling traffic.

Epplett, a detachment support staffer, said working as an
auxiliary officer will help her with career decisions.

“I wanted to get an understanding of what frontline policing
was really like… before I make the jump and go to Regina for six months,” she
said.

Smith already has a two-year college diploma in policing and
was an Ontario Provincial Police auxiliary officer before moving to Whistler in
2005.

The four new officers are part of a ramped up drive to bolster
the RCMP’s Whistler-Pemberton detachment, said spokesperson Ann-Marie Gallup.

“We hope to generate interest from the community and train a
couple more so with the Olympics coming up we have some extra members ready to
go,” Gallup said after the ceremony that about 30 friends, family and both on
and off duty police officers attended at Whistler’s emergency services
building.

In addition to fresh auxiliary officers, the RCMP launched a
Whistler recruiting drive for regular members. The force is losing about 500
officers a year to retirement from its 18,000 members and at the same time is
trying to bolster numbers in anticipation of the Olympics and to have a
heightened presence around the world, according to a recruiting officer. Cst.
Darwin Tetreault said the force needs an “unprecedented” number of recruits,
with targets to hire 1,457 this year, 2,000 next year and 2,340 in 2009.

Recent ads in both Whistler papers are an attempt to catch the
eye of Whistler’s young demographic. Tetreault will be in Whistler for
recruiting information sessions Feb. 16 and 17 at Spruce Grove Fieldhouse. He
said it’s not so far fetched to look to draw new recruits from Whistler’s
feisty snowboard community.

“People that work in Whistler in the winter are highly
motivated, they’re in our target demographic, they’re in good physical
condition and are typically well-educated,” Tetreault said from his Vancouver
office. Tetreault said he’s been to Whistler and doesn’t believe in the
snowboarder bad-boy image.

“They’re good, honest, hard-working, tax-paying people,” he
said. “They’re the kind of people we want inside the force.”

New recruits make $43,000 a year to start. After six months
training at the force’s national centre in Regina salaries rise to $52,000 per
year, with a further jump to $72,000 annually after three years of service.